John Bantin has been a full-time professional diving writer and underwater photographer since 1990. He makes around 300 dives each year testing diving equipment.

If you go diving in British waters without some form of surface marker, you are likely to get plenty of time, while you wait to be found, to examine your life, think about your loved ones, and consider all the mistakes you've made - including going diving without some form of surface signalling device.
     On the other hand, many leisure divers (let's not be anti-American at this moment!) go diving in places such as the Caribbean and expect to bob up in a flat-calm sea. If by some mismanagement they have missed the boat, they expect someone to rescue them pretty fast, or there will be hell to pay.
     The problem has arisen that many of these leisure divers, having grown tired of the sameness of the Caribbean, are venturing out to other parts of the world and thereby discovering the phenomenon of ocean currents.
     With ocean conditions, not only have you little chance of getting back to the boat under your own steam, but there are often big swells to hide your head from the view of those whose job it is to pick you up. So dive-boat operators, notably those operating liveaboards, dish out safety-sausages to be inflated by divers when they reach the surface.
     These sausages are less visible than a flag but they are handy to stow and give crews a better chance of spotting distant divers at the surface than nothing at all.
     They are low-tech devices which need to be inflated by the diver and then, with the open end held shut, to be pulled slightly below the surface to be sure of staying erect.
     Of course, this can lead to operator error. In keeping with customs on the far side of the Atlantic, it was only a matter of time before someone thought of making an automatic version. It's called the Surface Observation Signal, or SOS.
     The SeaQuest Pro QD and Pro Unlimited BCs have already been reviewed in these pages but Aqua-Lung UK sent me the latest Seaquest Pro QD SL Plus BC with which to try the device.
     It fits at the back and substitutes for the lower dump valve. It is fastened additionally with some elasticated webbing and a pinch-clip passed through the back part of the buoyancy bag. The sausage stays rolled up in its pouch until you wish to deploy it. By then you will be on the surface with the BC fully inflated.
     Pulling the rear toggle equipped with a small D-ring releases the safety sausage and allows it to fill with air, which it shares with the main buoyancy cell of the BC.
     To get it to inflate fully you need to fill the BC until its over-pressure release valves vents. So far so good.
     The problem is that the sausage tends to lay down, so you have to lie back to grab it and attach a little lanyard and karabiner that is fitted halfway along its length to a D-ring on the shoulder of your BC. So far but not quite so good.
     It gets worse. The problem seems to be that for the sausage to stay erect and therefore effective, you must maintain the air pressure within it. Unfortunately the Pro QD Plus seemed unable to do this.
     As my test diver, Chris from Wraysbury Dive Centre, bobbed on the water, the changing pressure on the BC tended to make its over-pressure valve blow off a little, thereby losing pressure and causing the sausage to suffer some flaccidity.
     As you can guess, a flaccid sausage is about as useless as it sounds. In fact, to keep it erect, Chris need to apply more air repeatedly by way of his direct-feed inflator.
     I fear that at sea a diver would soon run out of air in his tank after a dive and need to continue doing this by mouth. The small leaks which often occur in BCs would make matters worse.
     Our sausage continued to fall over. It was a severe case of diver's droop. So our verdict was: "SeaQuest, you're 'aving a larf!"
     What of the BC, the Pro QD SL Plus?
     The good news is that it has integrated-weight pouches vastly improved over its predecessors. These SL pouches are now no longer reliant on slabs of Velcro to keep them in place.
     Velcro works well in dive shops but you can come unstuck with it in the less-forgiving environments found while diving daily in hot countries, and where freshwater rinsing of the BC is rarely accomplished.
     The weight-pouches of the Pro QD SL Plus are retained by a new system of sprung pinch-clips and toggles. Velcro is used only to retain the weights within the pouches.
     The pouches were a little on the small side. I felt that 8kg of lead might well be the best they could take, not a lot when you consider that there are no auxiliary trim-weight pockets at the back. This BC is not for the drysuit diver with no additional weightbelt.
     So what do all those abbreviations stand for? QD is presumably "Quick Ditch" and SL is "Sure Lock".
     Otherwise, the Pro QD SL Plus is a conventionally styled BC with swivelling buckles at the shoulders so that the straps are routed comfortably; a choice of dumps at each shoulder, one operated by pulling on the corrugated hose; and just the right number (six) of stainless-steel D-rings.
     Two concertina-style pockets are closed by zips and a comfortable cushion pads the lumbar region. This BC gives plenty of surface buoyancy for the single tank user. It is a simple, well-designed item that does its job well. We liked it.
     The SeaQuest Pro QD Plus SL comes in sizes S, M, L and XL and costs £380. The optional SOS system is £60. For more information about the SeaQuest Pro BCs see previous testshere andhere

Aqua-Lung UK 0116 212 4200, www.aqualung.co.uk

Pro QD Plus has improved integrated weight system

- No space fora lot of lead - Get an independent safety-sausage or a flag

Air on a shoestring
Tigullio started in business in Italy in 1952. Celebrating its 50th anniversary, it has launched its T52 range of products, including an innovative BC (Diver Tests, April), a semi-dry suit and a couple of regulators. Tigullio has also decided that it is ready to tackle the British market.
     The Italian diving industry makes some of the best products in diving. It also makes some of the worst. Tigullio's R&D department is in Genoa. Assuming a certain amount of cross-fertilisation between engineers in the bars and restaurants of a town brimming with diving-equipment manufacturers, I didn't expect Tigullio products to be part of the latter group.
     I collected a T52 Airtrak regulator with its XP-10 first stage to find out if I was right.
     This is the company's entry-level model but is claimed to have a balanced-diaphragm first stage with coldwater specification, though this is quite straightforward, with only one high pressure port and four other ports located around a fixed barrel. It does feel unnaturally heavy, however.
     The second stage is cleanly designed and devoid of knobs. If you want knobs, Tigullio can provide you with the Airtrak Plus, which has a swivelling-turret first stage with two hp ports and a second stage which has some very fine knobs indeed. The front unscrews in a satisfying manner to reveal the diaphragm and what looks to be a well-made valve mechanism.
     In view of current trends towards smaller second stages, with a consequent diminishing return on the size of the exhaust tee, I was pleased to note that the Airtrak second stage may be neatly designed but has an exhaust tee that is large enough to direct my exhaled bubbles past the sides of my face instead of in front of my eyes. No face-jacuzzi effect here.
     I was diving in the Maldives with a buddy who proved to have remarkably light air consumption, and there were no larger 15 litre cylinders available for me in compensation.
     Therefore, to take more air with me, I opted to strap a pony cylinder to the standard aluminium 12 supplied and use its contents as part of my dive plan.
     This meant using the pony at the beginning of the dive and later swapping to the main cylinder and managing its air-supply in the normal way. Of course, that is not the way a pony is used when it is employed as a redundant air supply.
     The T52 Airtrak was fitted to the pony and in this way I used it for the deepest part of the dive, and often during a time when it was necessary to face into a strong current and swim heartily against it or, more often than not, to claw my way forward with my current hook to reach our intended location on the reef.
     Despite its very heavy workload, the T52 Airtrak always gave me a plentiful and comfortable breathe, similar in some ways to that of the equally inexpensive Oceanic SP4 Alpha 7, the model that surprised everyone by doing so well in our recent comparative regulator tests.
     It also compared very favourably in that respect to the excellent regulator on my main tank, one that cost five times as much as the Airtrak. Air flooded into my mouth in an un-jetlike manner and, despite the fact that I was able to drain the 3 litres in no time, I never felt uneasy about its ability to deliver.
     I cannot say that this regulator, or the Alpha 7 for that matter, would be ideal for coldwater diving. There doesn't seem to be much evidence of that. But if you always dive in the sea, it's another budget-priced regulator to consider.
The Tigullio T52 Airtrak (XP-10) costs £165 and the octopus for it £79.

Beaver Sports 01484 512354, www.beaversports.co.uk

+ Bargain price + Comfortable breathe

- Not suggested for use in fresh water of less than 10°C

This one will burn and burn
There was a time when a torch was simply a battery, a bulb and a switch. Underwater torches were slightly more complicated because they had to be made watertight. People would make their own from a short length of drainpipe, a sealed-beam car headlamp and a wet-acid battery, all kept cosy with a big O-ring.
     Things have changed. Now you have a choice of power sources - ordinary alkaline dry cells, a rechargeable ni-cad battery pack or a hi-tech ni-mh battery pack.
     When it comes to the part that produces the light, alongside ordinary tungsten bulbs, higher-output tungsten-halogen bulbs and high-intensity gas discharge (HID) lamps, there are now also high-output light-emitting diodes or LEDs.
     No longer do you have a simple choice between a small, low-output torch or a larger, higher-output lantern. Many divers opt for a battery-pack fixed to their tank or another part of their kit, to be included in their lead ballast calculations. The business end of the light is fed by an umbilical cable.
     Of course, some hi-tech offerings are fearsomely expensive. GreenForce products are made in Belgium and aim to supply the effect at the minimum price, even if this means cutting down on "sophistication". They are based on a sympathetic system of interchangeable parts. Buy the elements you need and select the solution to suit your needs.
     A burntime of 40 hours from a battery that charges in three to four hours, and a light output equivalent to 30W - that's the impressive claimed of the manufacturer for its F2 TriStar. How does it do it? By combining a big battery-pack with high-output LEDs.
     GreenForce products have all the aesthetics of a 1950s Ascot water heater (though the unattractive ribbing of the battery-pack does provide a very secure grip with the thickest gloves).
     Neither are they exactly sophisticated. While other lamps have electronics to take care of the problem, with the GreenForce battery-pack gases produced by uncontrolled charging are allowed to escape through a simple pressure-relief valve. You have to unscrew the cable or lamphead screwed into the battery-pack and replace it with a plug provided.
     This has a rather primitive electrical connection into which you can plug the charger unit. At least the unit can be quickly modified to fit British, European or US plug sockets.
     The modular design allows you to screw together different parts of the product. You can screw a lamphead directly into a battery-pack and get a simple one-piece lantern or insert an umbilical cable with male and female connectors in-line to get a technical diving light.
     It's simple to remove the lantern handle from the battery-pack because it is held on with a single hexagonal-headed bolt. The secret of the F2 TriStar is the LED lamp head used instead of any of the other options.
     One LED would not produce enough light, so the designers have installed a group of three. The problem is that the reflector design makes it impossible to get all three LEDs at the point-of-focus of the parabolic reflector, so they have given each LED its own.
     The modular design uses a lot of O-rings - three in-line at each connection. The user needs to be sensible about maintaining these in a properly greased and grit-free condition.
     It doesn't help that you have to switch the unit on and off by screwing and unscrewing one of these connectors until contact is made or broken.
     I watched in horror once during a dive as someone to whom I had lent another GreenForce lamp unscrewed its lamphead far more than was necessary to switch it off, and risked a serious flood. But, given a cautious diver, the manufacturer is confident enough to give it a depth-rating of 250m. That's surely enough for anyone.
     Although the TriStar offered such a long burntime, the light it produced was not particularly bright or penetrative. I don't know if this is a function of refraction under water but it looked cold and didn't seem to go very far as a beam, although I was seen by others from a long way off.
     I confess that I used it in the rather impressive company of a very expensive Swiss HID lamp that was nearly 32 times brighter. The comparison was unfortunate, because I am sure that had the GreenForce F2 TriStar been my only light source, my eyes would have become more easily adjusted to the gloom.
     The use of this sort of light does tend to do away with charging problems, but because the burntime is so long one would need to keep a log of its use or risk being let down at some point.
     My thanks to Nigel Wade for helping me with the underwater photography of this product.
The GreenForce F2 TriStar costs £315 in hand-lantern form and £360 with umbilical connections. It was supplied for this test with an optional 130kg breaking-strain coiled lanyard which includes a heavy-duty buckle and naval bronze swivel ends (around £21 extra).

Lumb Bros 0161 681 5790

+ Less expensive than superficially similar options + Massively long burntimes

- Slightly over-simplified, verging on crude - Not very bright

Straight shooter
The Oceanic Chute 3 looks the business. It's a wing-style BC with a large buoyancy bag attached by elasticated webbing and pinch-clips at only four points to a comfortable and very strongly built 1600 denier material harness. The stretchy Bioflex buoyancy cell provides a maximum of 27kg of lift in sizes L and XL, and more than 20kg in sizes S and M.
     There are no bungees, which should please the DIR fanatics. The wing is also sandwiched between the two halves of the hard backpack, which has a soft velvet cushion with extra lumbar padding that would make it comfortable to wear against bare skin. That should please the scuba-nudist brigade.
     There are eight big stainless-steel D-rings and two less-than-capacious pockets, although these are big enough for things like a tightly rolled late-deployment SMB and a spare low-volume mask.
     Detailed touches are the attached but optional handy Spinner 304 stainless-steel knife and the retracting lanyard, which might prove ideal for attaching the pressure-gauge. It will keep it from dangling but allow you to pull it out to read it.
     The Chute 3 functioned without complication. The only dump valve for normal use is the shoulder dump operated by pulling on the corrugated hose.
     It was nice that the elasticated webbing that held the wing to the opposite shoulder also made sure that no unruly bag was allowed to form and trap a pocket of air. There is also a dump at the lower back operated by a short toggle.
     This is the sort of BC that lets you go about your underwater business in an unflamboyant and dignified way. It gave me no unpleasant surprises.
     The best thing about the Chute 3 is the integrated-weight system. Besides the trim-weight pockets (maximum 2kg each) at the back of the harness, the main ditchable weight-pouches are big enough to take at least 7kg each, so that the total all-up weight will be useful to most drysuit divers. They are also unlikely to fall out when you least expect it.
     This is because Oceanic has eschewed the use of Velcro, apart from in keeping the weights within the pouches. The pouches are held within the slots in the BC harness by an Oceanic patented clip, which is rather like a pinch-clip but is released when you pull on the attached toggle. You simply pull the toggle to release and pull away the weight-pouches, and there is no doubt about the way in which they are reinstalled.
     I liked the Oceanic Chute 3 very much indeed. Its cost is invested in high-quality content rather than heaps of cheap features and its strength is in the way it functions.
     My only reservation is that the designers, having created a really sleek item but with little pocket space, decided to build in a drop-down pocket that can otherwise be zipped away.
     I found that when I put anything in this pocket, it bumped against my leg in an irritating manner. So I decided to zip it back away where I found it and stay as streamlined as the Chute 3 allowed me to be.
     There is an optional adapter for those who want to use the Chute 3 with twin tanks, and also an optional crotch strap. The Chute 3 has a lifetime warranty.
The Oceanic Chute 3 is available in sizes S, M, L and XL and costs £447. The optional Spinner knife costs £22.

Oceanic SW 01404 891819, www.oceanicuk.com

+ Delivers what it promises + Good integrated-weight system + No unnecessary complications

- Drop-down pocket irritating once in use

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